A letter from the principal

Dear Parents,

I sincerely hope that your children had a smooth start of the school year.

I am contacting you in relation to an issue that has been raised during the last Health and Safety Committee: parking places for the school buses.

Particularly the parents of the newly enrolled pupils might not be aware that the parking slots, indicated in red in the attached plan, are reserved from 8:00 to 9:00 and from 12:30 to 16:30 for the parking of the buses of the school transport. Official signalisation is in place.

We are happy that many pupils make use of their bikes to get to the school. We would like to see even more…. We are also happy that many families have opted for school transport: we have 6 buses getting to the school each day!

This is the reason why the Local Authorities have reserved the mentioned parking slots for these buses: pupils getting to school by bus have then a safe landing to the school. When these parking places would be left available for the buses, buses can stop there and children using bus transport safely get into the school.

I have been reported and I have checked personally that, unfortunately, this is not often the case.

Some parents, using their own car to get their children to the school, use to park in the reserved area at the most critical time both in the mornings and in the afternoons.

This is not permitted and should be avoided, even for a short time.

The reason being: when the reserved area would be even partly occupied, buses cannot park there and are often obliged to stop on the street. Children then have to get off the buses in an unsafe way.

I understand that this wrong habit might not have been intentional, given the fact that signalisation could be better visible: traffic signs are hidden by tree leaves.

May I kindly invite all of you who are bringing their children to the school with a car, to use other areas to park, please?

It might be useful to remind that the area highlighted in green  on the plan is a piece of land that the Local Authorities tolerate is used as car parking. From there, there is a safe pedestrian access to the Nursery and Primary school entrance. You can park your car there and, if you so wish, accompany your child to the school entrance by foot. Even better, you might be willing to grant your children the trust to walk on their own to the school entrance.

Many thanks in advance for your kind attention, I am sure you will respect the reserved area for the buses during the indicated times, so that pupils getting to school by school transport will no longer be exposed to a risk when they get off their bus.

Kind regards,

Giancarlo Marcheggiano
Director